Demons, hell and the human soul: C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Screwtape Letters’ coming to Pikes Peak Center
Courtesy of Joan Marcus
Meet Screwtape, a senior demon in hell.
His mission: corrupting human souls. And he has some advice on just how to do it, too.
The Fellowship for Performing Arts will bring C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” to the stage on Sunday at Pikes Peak Center. This theatrical adaptation, produced by Max McLean, follows demon Screwtape as he shares his schemes to capture a person’s soul with his nephew, Wormwood. Through a series of letters, Screwtape talks temptation and spiritual warfare.
“There’s a predator-prey story, and Screwtape’s a predator and this unsuspecting human on Earth is the prey,” said McLean, founder and artistic director of the Fellowship for Performing Arts. The Fellowship is a New York-based nonprofit that produces theater and film from a Christian worldview.
The book was written by famed Christian author Lewis, who was not only a great teacher, McLean said, but perhaps the most influential Christian writer of the 20th century.
“He had a steel-trap mind that could remember everything he wrote, and he had this amazing ability to translate it into magnificent prose of speech, and he did it all under a Christian perspective,” McLean said. “He’s always had this reputation of speaking to a wider audience. … He himself was a hard-boiled atheist. He called himself the most reluctant convert in all England.”
The adaptation remains faithful to the original text, with much of Lewis’ writing appearing in the show, McLean said.
“We really love Lewis’ language and his insights,” he said.
“He’s just this constellation of ideas that are just kind of overwhelming. You just get them nowhere else. And so we wanted to share that with the audience.”
While as a theatrical production, it serves to entertain, McLean hopes that the show impacts the audience so they walk away reflecting.
“There’s a sense of taking an assessment of your own worldview, you know, how it aligns, how it doesn’t. And so for some people, it’s a convicting experience. And then for a handful of people here and there, it’s a life-changing experience,” McLean said.
